|
Please let me share some coverage from the local paper in El Paso, Texas, about that city and its evacuees. Aside from a language barrier (El Paso is 85% Hispanic), and a stolen pair of barber clippers, these stories of the spirit of the evacuees and the kindness and generosity of the city moved me to tears. All is from coverage in the El Paso Times (www.elpasotimes.com). I can only hope stories like these are being repeated in other towns across the country.
Culture shock seemed like a piece of cake for Dorrell Keellen after surviving Hurricane Katrina....After all the paperwork and getting tagged and processed, Keellen and some of the other more than 400 hurricane survivors finally found time Tuesday to leave the makeshift shelter at the civic center to explore their adopted city.
Some looked for ways to bridge language barriers; others went shopping. A few, like Keelen, went hunting for fast food or something different from the feast of pizza and burritos, grits, eggs, sausage, danish and cookies at the shelter...."There's been nothing but love here," Keellen said.
Inside the shelter, protected by uniformed police officers, Gloria Calway, 74, talked about how the Spanish she took in college not long ago might come in handy these days. She's thinking of staying long enough to continue chasing her degree in criminal justice, the degree she had been pursuing at Southern University of New Orleans.
"I want to be a lawyer," she said.
Christina Taylor, 32, ran into a stranger who offered to give her a tour of Downtown. Tayler already had Chantilly Lane, an usher for the city, as her escort for the day.
"The people, regardless of whether they're Hispanic or whatever, everybody is good," Tyler said. "We're trying to get jobs to keep from going back."
"We had tacos and burritos here, but I'm used to Mexican food," (Lawrence Keys, 55) said. "I'LL ADJUST TO ANY CULTURE. I'M AMERICAN."
Members of a New Orleans family who fled Hurricane Katrina are beginning to piece together their lives in El Paso and get used to the community that has taken them in.
"I love it. I can't complain," said Wellington Wilson....He and six family members have found refuge in three units of a South-Central El Paso apartment complex donated by its owner, Maria Stoiber.
Students evacuated from New Orleans and now living in the Judson F. Williams Convention Center will start school today in makeshift classrooms set up by the El Paso Independent School District....Experienced teachers will go to the convention center every day to make sure the students do not fall behind academically.
Evacuees were given appointments with dentists who donated their time, and some will also be visiting optometrists.
Katharine Shaw lost her eyeglasses and hopes to get new ones today after her eye appointment.
"People are really going out of their way," Shaw said. "The police here are the smilingest police you've ever seen."
Sun Metro has started giving the evacuees bus passes, and Willie Collins looked forward to exploring the city.
After three days cooped up inside the Convention Center, hurricane survivor Kirk Thomas got to see the city he is considering making his home....The city hired Si! El Paso Tours Inc. to organize van tours Wednesday for a dozen of the hundreds of evacuees who started arriving Sunday afternoon....Benny's Pawn Shop Downtown, with its life-size statues of the Blues Brothers, was a bona fide hit, and so was the Sunland Park Mall. But the mountains took the prize.
(David Carrier, 26, of Amite, La. used his barber clippers to give 67 haircuts before, in one regrettable note, his clippers went missing. He said: "I can cut everyone's hair. I'm a multicultural cutter.")
He had to be, or else fellow survivors James Beecham and Lonnie James wouldn't let him touch their 'do....
El Paso hairdresser Aida Smith...was at the convention center Wednesday afternoon as a volunteer styling hair. She quickly noticed how grateful the survivors were to get their hair done.
"They feel human again," Smith said. "When you are getting your hair done, you feel special."
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
